Day Five - So it's true what they say...

....you really do get less hungry.  Today I had morning juice, and didn't really want more until dinner time.  I did drink small glasses of OJ, maybe two, during the day just because I know if I am not careful I'll get tired and run down without enough calories.  My dinner juice was spinach and celery with mixed melon, pineapple, orange, and a handful of cranberries.  I am drinking it now as I type, and it's delicious.

I talked to my sister on the phone today; she and her husband juice in the mornings, and have moved to all organic, non-GMO foods for their family.  My brother-in-law also eats a lot of raw foods.  Anyway, we were talking about the changes we have felt, and she asked me if I felt good.  And the answer is, my god yes.  I feel so much more awake during the day, and more alert, and I feel like I am appreciating things more because of it.  This morning the sky was blue with high white clouds, and I thought to myself how winter is starting, and about the winters of my childhood in frigid upstate New York.  I stood on my back porch and looked around and everything was so bright, and crisp, and beautiful.  Even the air smelled like winter.

Many people have written about how fasting changes you in the way other challenges do, by making you examine yourself.  They have written about the mind game of fasting that lets you master your cravings and forever changes your relationship with food and how you view it and what it means to your body.  I feel like I am just getting the first glimmers of that awakening.  I prepared grilled chicken and broccoli for my daughter for dinner, and the chicken smelled fantastic...at first.  But underneath that smell was a sense of what eating that chicken would represent to my fast, and how it would make me feel if I did eat it.  I turned around and started pushing celery into the juicer and that smell, and the smell of orange oil on my fingers as I peeled clementines, completely trumped the chicken... because I decided it did.  My choice, not my craving's.  I do miss hot food, and as it gets colder I imagine I will even more, but for the time being I have a mug decaf green tea and a sense that I am grabbing hold of something valuable that I do not want to let go of for a mere moment's pleasure.